Recommendations and Reviews for > 20" Monitors?

Yet Another Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm in the market for a new monitor, and am considering a 20"-21". The problem is that I've had trouble getting much information about them; the local computer stores tend to max out at 19", as do the a lot of the reviews I've found in magazines and on the Web. The reviews I have found on the Web are contradictory in some cases, and for the most part are gamer sites which only have reviews for one or two large monitors, so it is hard to get a sense of relative "goodness". I'm particularly interested in text clarity at high resolutions, but gaming quality is a runner up. "

Comments

Iiyama VisionMasterPro 510

[Daffy Duck]

After shopping for over a year I just bought one of these two days ago. I'm quite happy with it so far. It uses the DiamondTron tube, which is a Trinitron with a flat face. This eliminates a lot of distortion and glare. It claims to be a 22" tube but the viewable area is 20".

I'm currently running it at 1600x1200 at 80Hz, and the text in an xterm with the "tiny" font is easily readable at normal viewing distance. The monitor could refresh even faster (100Hz at this resolution), but my Matrox Millennium can't. Likewise, 1800x1440 is readable but a little flickery at 68Hz. A newer video card would probably be awesome.

Two things made me nervous about buying. (1) The price on these larger monitors hasn't plummeted the way the 17" and 19" have, so if you want that extra couple of inches you're going to pay dearly. (2) I did a lot of reading and the general impression I got was that Iiyamas are great if you get a good one, but your chances of getting a lemon are about 1 in 10. So make sure the place you buy it from has a good return/exchange policy. If you go retail, ask them to hook it up in the store so you can check it out. (At these prices, you don't have to feel bad about making them work a little for a sale.) After the sale, Iiyama is reputed to have excellent service during the 3-year warranty period.